


Touch Me Like You Do

by freelancejouster



Category: Monsta X (Band)
Genre: ASMR, Alien/Human Relationships, Aliens, Alternate Universe - Future, Body Horror, Consentacles, Fluff, Fluff and Smut, M/M, Massage, Relaxation, Sex Work, Shownu is kind of an escort in kind of a brothel but it's not exactly that, Smut, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, anxiety mention, if you really hate sex work adjacent things you probably won't like this, paying for sex, tentacle massage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-01
Updated: 2019-11-01
Packaged: 2021-01-16 01:14:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,526
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21262676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freelancejouster/pseuds/freelancejouster
Summary: Really, there was no harm in just — trying it once, right?





	Touch Me Like You Do

**Author's Note:**

> Maybe I just post tentacle fics for Halloween. Maybe that's who I am now.
> 
> Consider this a general warning for all the bondage/restriction/manhandling/breathplay things that go along with that.

Really, there was no harm in just — trying it once, right?

This was what Changkyun told himself as he stood outside of the well-lit storefront. The street wasn’t anything special, a coffee shop he’d been to a half dozen times at one end, a robotic-upgrades store at the other, an alien cuisine place he’d been meaning to try just another block over. It wasn’t anything special. The store itself seemed innocuous enough, as well. A poster of a pair of people chatting at a table plastered across the wide front window, a well designed logo centered on the door.

He stood quietly for a moment longer. Pressed his lips together for a moment, bucket hat pulled low over his hair.

People went here all the time, it wasn’t a big deal. Hell, there were advertisements for the place everywhere. He’d heard his coworkers talking about visiting just a week or so ago.

It _wasn’t_ a big deal, but Changkyun hadn’t been before. He hadn’t been before, though the idea had always intrigued him. If he thought about it for took long it seemed to drizzle to the front of his mind and make his whole brain feel fuzzy, like an old television tuned to straight static.

He rubbed at his nose once, glanced down the street. Wished he’d thought to drink something to lower his inhibitions or something before doing this. Went inside.

—

“Can I help you find something?”

A hostess of sorts hovered near the entrance. She looked human, more or less, like him, but there was something vibratey about her edges, something too bright to her eyes and too precise to her movements. Either an android or a robot. Like most service level jobs. She was pleasant to look at, though, dressed in a heavy, velvety sort of robe, a thin gold necklace descending into well-positioned decolletage.

“Um,” Changkyun said, looking back up at her face. She had a light smattering of freckles across her nose. That seemed like an odd choice. He glanced around the entrance chamber. He wasn’t sure what he had been expecting. A list of specials maybe. A menu or something. But it was just this woman with a screen facing her, floating a few feet in front of her and a little to her right.

“Have you been here before?” she asked, her voice soothing. Her smile was toothy but a little imperfect. She radiated an energy like Changkyun could trust her, like she was in on the joke. He wondered how, specifically, that had been programmed in.

He swallowed; his throat felt particularly dry.

“No,” he said. He shook his head. “This is my first time.”

“We’ll make sure to take good care of you,” she said. A flash of that same smile. She tapped at the screen with short, well-manicured nails. “Are you looking for anything in particular?” she asked after a moment, her eyes glancing back over to him.

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Is there like, an introductory session? Something short and — I don’t know. Low contact?”

She smiled that smile again. Maybe it was the only one she had. Tapped through a few more screens, vivid blues and white reflected in her bright eyes. “We can do that for you, yes. I think we have someone who will be really perfect for you. And you, um, how will you be paying for the experience this evening?”

Oh. Right.

Changkyun started fishing for his wallet.

—

He followed the hostess down a hallway, through a door that lead to another hallway, and then into a small sort of antechamber room. Just a bowl of snacks on a table, a pair of comfortable chairs, a place to plug things in if he would need to do that.

“He’ll be with you shortly,” the hostess said, gesturing through the room at the door they hadn't come in through.

“Oh,” Changkyun said. He nodded vaguely to confirm he understood that he should wait. “Sure, thank you.”

“Of course,” she said, nodding at him slightly. He watched as she tucked a bit of hair that had slipped loose behind her ear, a series of deft animations. He wondered, again, if she’d been given these mannerisms for this job specifically or if whomever owned the establishment had found her and thought she might be suited as the face of the company. It was such an oddly specific feeling she conveyed.

He wasn’t sure he could pinpoint what it was.

He watched as she left, closing the door quietly behind him.

It was worse, somehow, now that he was alone. He became very aware of himself, not sure what to do with his hands or his legs or his elbows at all in the comfortable chair. He wished, a little, that he’d been given a wait time or maybe something to read. Something to distract himself from lingering for too long on the idea. On what he was about to do.

His hands felt clammy and wrong. Nervous. He folded them together and then decided that felt strange. He rested each one on its respective armrest, but felt absurdly kingly doing so.

He took his hat off and held it in his hands, because that felt polite somehow. But he found himself worrying at the brim as the minutes ticked past, messing with the fabric despite knowing that it wasn’t very good for the hat.

After a moment, he reached for a snack instead. He pulled a small, brightly packaged bar of something or other and began to unwrap it.

Before he could taste whatever it was, the door opened.

Changkyun wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, really, but it wasn’t this hulking figure of a man with gently sloping shoulder and an oddly earnest energy. Changkyun sat up a little straighter in his chair. They were both dressed casually, but there was something about the other man that seemed infinitely more put together. His entire appearance cultivated in a way to make him seem nonthreatening, even as he had a good foot of height on him.

Besides the strange proportions, though, he looked generally humanoid. Something a little strange about the way he held his shoulders, maybe. Cheekbones maybe just a little too sharp. Something a little off in the texture of his skin if Changkyun looked at him for too long. But relatively normal, more normal than he expected.

Not human, but close. Close enough that you had to squint.

“Hi,” he said. His voice was soft, low but not as low as Changkyun’s.

“Hi,” Changkyun chirped.

“Did you have to wait long?”

“No, it’s okay.”

“Do you want to come in?” His eyebrows tented. That earnestness again. Pouty lips that looked just a little bit odd in his strong face.

Changkyun sat dumbly in the chair in the waiting room and didn’t — didn’t know how to answer him. He wanted to come in, of course, he’d agonized over the decision for ages before actually wandering in the front door. It was more that he wasn’t sure what level of enthusiasm would be acceptable.

He swallowed hard.

Nodded.

The man turned where he stood and gestured for Changkyun to follow. The room they walked into was an odd sort of space, somehow both intimate like a bedroom and whimsical like a flower shop. Trios of plants dotted the space, clinging to table tops and nestled into corners, soft fabrics draped the seating area, silvery glass bobbles floated cautiously around the ceiling.

It was an odd sort of place. More alien than he looked.

Changkyun eyed the bed towards the back of the room, lush fabrics drizzling off of it and onto the floor, but the man crossed to sit stiffly at the table shoved off to the side. His shoulders sat back and at attention.

Changkyun pressed his lips together and sat down across from him.

"I'm Hyunwoo," the man said in his soft voice. He nodded a little as he said it, almost as though to assure himself and it was a little strange, but Changkyun couldn't help but find it cute.

"Changkyun," Changkyun said. There was a pause where he wondered if maybe he was supposed to nod back. He ended up inclining his head just a little bit. Hyunwoo's plush lips twitch into an amused little smile but he didn't say anything about it.

"I know that," he said. He tapped a little screen Changkyun hadn't seen in the wall. It popped out and Hyunwoo swiveled it so that it was facing him. "I also know that you've never been here before, which is why we're not going to the bed."

"I —" Changkyun started to protest.

"I see everything," Hyunwoo said calmly. Changkyun couldn't tell if he was joking or not.

It was difficult not to pout. He hadn't really meant to be looking at it like that, it was just that — well, it was there. And he'd been thinking about what this might be, exactly. He knew, more or less, what he was supposed to be expecting. But that didn't stop his thoughts from drifting back to old B-movies he'd watched in the middle of the night, complete with cheesy dialogue, velvety sheets, and rubbery limbs.

"Don't worry about it, most people have a little bit of a different idea of what this place is." He shrugged his massive shoulders. "I don't recommend it on a first visit, but if that's what you're absolutely here for..."

"No!" Changkyun said. "I'm sorry, I —"

Hyunwoo grinned at him. _He's teasing me_ a little voice noted in the back of Changkyun's mind. Huh.

"I wasn't sure what to expect," he settled on. There was something calming about Hyunwoo's presence and the odd little alien room in general that Changkyun wasn't sure how to describe. It was almost like the energy that they shared was the same, soothing and coy at once, soft and alluring. "What will we be doing, then?" Changkyun asked.

He wasn't sure he meant it to sound so — so leading, but Hyunwoo smiled at him anyway.

"I have like, a spiel," Hyunwoo said, indicating the screen in front of him.

Changkyun nodded. Tried not to hold his breath.

Hyunwoo moved in his chair, just a stretch of his shoulders, a slight redistribution of weight, but when he looked at Changkyun next, there was something decidedly less human about him. Like a little bit of his form had fallen, his shoulders wider, his eyes a little smaller, a little further apart.

The table made soft thudding noises as he rested both of his arms down on it, palms towards the ceiling.

"Okay," he said. "Lay your arms over mine. You don't have to press down or anything, but sometimes people find it helpful. I think that it grounds them."

Changkyun felt a little burble of nervousness flit through his stomach, but did as he was told. His arms looked oddly thin against Hyunwoo's. He suspected most people's arms looked oddly thin compared to Hyunwoo's. There wasn't anything odd to them, no stickiness or hardness that shouldn't have been there. Just smooth skin, thick muscle. He was surprised at how intimate it felt, to splay his fingers across Hyunwoo’s forearms.

"Grounds them?" Changkyun asked, not sure what he was supposed to be expecting.

"That's the word they used," Hyunwoo said with a little earnest nod, as if to confirm.

"Okay," Changkyun said.

"Okay," Hyunwoo echoed softly. He swallowed. Blinked once, oddly slow. Started to speak.

"It's natural for people, for humans especially, to be fascinated by this sort of thing you know. The practice goes back centuries. The way that my people go about filling this niche is something like scratching an itch. Something like filling a void. Something like catering specifically. It's not as much of an age old practice as it is adapting something that's always been. Engineering something that's always been. Soothing something that's always been.

"I've heard people compare it to massage. The way that they find it so relaxing. The way that they find it to loosen their muscles and make them go limp. The way that they always crave more afterwards. It's not something to be afraid of or something to mock, it's just something to relax into and let yourself enjoy. Don't over-analyze it, if you can help it. Don't dwell on it, if you can help it. Don't worry it, if you can help it."

Changkyun found himself focusing on the way his mouth moved when he spoke. Watched the was his lower lip would drop at the end of words, the way he shaped them along his tongue. Watched as his eyes glazed over just a little from the repetitiveness of the wording in front of him. The way his accent thickened just a little bit, lisping along anything too sharp.

There wasn't any room for sharpness here. It was just as well.

He almost didn't notice when Hyunwoo's arms began to change. It felt as though one moment they were solid below his and then, suddenly, they weren't and perhaps they had never been. Because he hadn't seen when they began to change to — to this.

It was weirdly fascinating the way that the skin seemed to melt and shift and regather itself, creating tendrils where there had moments before been fingertips. Watched as they wrapped their way around Changkyun's wrists and slithered up his arms, something about them strong, impossibly strong, at the same time they felt almost like smooth rubber bands.

He daydreamed, absently, about what might happen if he struggled against them. If they might hold him in place more forcibly. He shouldn't — he shouldn't have wondered, perhaps, so vividly, but imagined that they might twist their way more tightly around him and squeeze until his skin turned purple. Might hold him aloft in the air and shake him about, moving him around like a ragdoll. Like he weighed nothing.

As it was, he stayed definitively seated in his chair. He blinked once, hard, to shake the image from his mind, the strength that Hyunwoo might have in these — these appendages. The way he'd imagined being almost inconsequential in their grip.

It wasn't scary. Maybe it should have been.

More and more of the tendrils appeared, some of them thinner than his pinky finger, some of them nearly as thick as his wrist. After a moment, they'd completely coated his arms, his skin only visible as they writhed for purchase.

Maybe — maybe there should have been panic or something. Maybe a more reasonable person would have flailed to try and yank themselves away or would have started chattering with fear. Maybe they would have yelled for help or kicked out in some way or another, but Changkyun — Changkyun felt the opposite. It was almost as though his his mind was washed over with a wave of calm. He felt all of his thoughts tamp down into a soft background noise, felt his mind go deliciously blank.

"Oh," he said, softly, letting his eyes drop closed. A thick tendril looped around the point of his elbow, pulled him ever so slightly forwards. Their movement felt almost massage-like as they dug into his skin, nothing particularly slimy or strange about them, but just smooth and sure of their movement. His arms were pulled forward just a little bit more, a thick tentacle looped its way around his torso and hung loose, and suddenly it was almost as though he were being pressed against the table in front of him.

It was almost — he felt almost buzzy in response to the sensation. A soft little shiver started thrumming through his body, almost like goosebumps but less cold. Like his very being was feeling it instead of his body.

Hyunwoo's voice was droning in front of him still, reminding him to keep calm and relax and let the experience overtake him, but he couldn't imagine it feeling anything but utterly serene to have the tentacles wrapping around him. To have them take control.

"Take a deep breath," Hyunwoo said. Changkyun did as he was told without thinking about it. Breathed in to the sound of him counting. And then out.

With no additional warning, the tentacle around his chest tightened, forcibly removing the rest of the air from his lungs. The strength of it was amazing, one moment loose and almost cuddly, the next like a vice tucked just below his ribcage. He felt his spine pop in a flurry of sounds and it was like something was being taken from him —

He felt that maybe he should care, but couldn't, the soft calm from before still floating through his brain. The connection of being _touched_ so strong and visceral that it wasn't — there wasn't anything he could do to argue with it.

"Fuck," he said in a whisper.

He heard Hyunwoo chuckle quietly. The tentacle shoving its way up his body a little bit higher. He breathed out at Hyunwoo's suggestion and his spine popped again, higher this time, between his shoulder blades.

A giddy laugh left Changkyun's throat in response.

"One more," Hyunwoo prompted. The tentacle worked its way across Changkyun's chest, pressing in against the slight muscle there, and wrapped over his shoulders. For the first time there was a little churn of uneasiness in response, but he breathed out like he was supposed to anyway and when the tentacle tightened he felt something pop at the base of his neck with a heavy _crack_.

"Shit," he said quietly.

Hyunwoo returned back to droning on in the background, soft voice monotonous and gentle. The tentacles started to relax and unfurl from his arms, pulling back one at a time. Releasing his shoulders and his torso, then loosening and eventually withdrawing from his elbows. A pair of thicker tendrils stayed wrapped around his wrists while even the smallest withdrew, holding him steady and keeping him grounded where he might have otherwise felt adrift.

It was an odd sort of sensation, for them all to leave him afterwards. As though he'd been drained in some way. His limbs hung looser, his shoulders heavier. He felt exhausted in a way he wasn't sure he recognized. A little like that time he'd tried to keep up with Jooheon in the gym, but more like the feeling was buried into his entire body, weighty and satisfied and bone-achingly tired.

"Focus on the feeling of the contact around your wrists. Let it ground you. Let it hold you. Let it tether you. I'm going to count backwards and then let go, but remember that you are seated and safe. Okay?"

"Okay," Changkyung echoed without thinking too much about it.

Hyunwoo counted backwards from five and Changkyun tried very hard to focus on his breathing. Let his hands settle back down, flat against the rest of Hyunwoo's forearms. That was better, somehow, warm skin beneath his hand.

He opened his eyes and made slightly too intimate eye contact with Hyunwoo who just smirked a little and continued counting.

The tendril withdrew just after Hyunwoo said _one_ and Changkyun felt almost as though he wanted to chase it. Could feel himself wanted to lunge across the table, but that would be — strange, probably.

They sat in silence together for a moment. Hyunwoo returned to normal. Changkyun placed his hands into his lap when he realized he was still gripping Hyunwoo's arms. If felt a little silly to be self-conscious of any touching after what they'd been doing, but he still definitely did.

He wasn't sure what the silence was for, but Changkyun used it to gulp down deep breaths and try and get himself to feel more normal and less exhausted. It was a _good_ exhausted, of course, but it still wasn't — 

He was tired. He felt like he could nap for a thousand years.

"So how was it?" Hyunwoo asked after a moment. "For your first time?"

Changkyun shrugged a little. "I wasn't sure what to expect, honestly, but it was —" _Wonderful_ was the way he wanted to finish that sentence. _Incredible_. _Like nothing I've ever dared fantasize about_. "It was really interesting," he said, trying to choose words that might make him seem more normal.

"I'm glad you thought so." He nodded a little. Tapped at something on his screen. "Do you feel more relaxed? Do you think that it helped?"

Changkyun wondered if the fact that he was tense and anxious about coming in had been written all over his face. It was a little embarrassing, but it felt stupid to be embarrassed now.

"I think so." He stifled a yawn in the back of his hand. "I mostly just feel — tired. Is that what the bed is for?" he wondered aloud.

Hyunwoo pressed his lips together and shook his head. "No your — your thought before was closer, I think."

"Oh," Changkyun said. He wasn't — really surprised. He'd seen videos about these kinds of places. A tentacled man prone on a lush looking bed, a curvy woman held aloft, his tentacles disappearing all over the place. "That's —"

"For another time, maybe," Hyunwoo said with a little smile.

It occured to Changkyun all at once that he might be flirting. He found himself inexplicably delighted at the idea, though he hadn't been thinking about it much like that at all. He'd wanted to be respectful of the process, wanted to allow for Hyunwoo to do his job, but if —

He watched as Hyunwoo's cheeks blushed a soft orange and he started on another subject to draw attention away from the fact that Changkyun hadn't responded yet.

Changkyun decided all at once that he was kind of adorable.

"Yeah, next time," Changkyun said definitively.

Hyunwoo grinned at him.

—

Hyunwoo walked him out after a little bit of chit-chat. It was difficult to tell if he was just being polite or it was something that he was supposed to be doing due to how extreme Changkyun's emotional response had been or if it was — something he wanted himself.

Changkyun didn't know how to ask, but let himself linger in the space anyway. Asked follow up questions when there was an opportunity to. Learned that Hyunwoo had been born here but his parents hadn't, learned he really liked the Pad Thai at the place two blocks over, learned he grinned easily and with very little prompting.

It felt oddly intimate, what they'd done together, but Changkyun knew that that wasn't _supposed_ to be the case. While the process wasn't clinical or anything, it was just — a thing that they did. Something he could schedule a week in advance and do to release all the tension in his shoulders, maybe take him out of his head a little and let himself just think of nothing for a little while.

Hyunwoo made a face at the screen and Changkyun knew it was time to leave.

He wandered out of Hyunwoo's room and down the hallway.

"Did you have a nice appointment?" the robot asked. She blinked expectantly. Changkyun found himself grinning.

"Yeah, it was really good." The words didn't seem like quite enough. He didn't have the words to describe it, but couldn't remember the last time he'd felt like this — if he'd ever felt like this.

"I'm glad," she said. Changkyun wasn't convinced she could feel gladness but didn't correctly her. "Is this something you would like to do again? If it's something you enjoyed, experts state that a month between appointments is the optimum amount of time. That that's how one best reaps the benefits."

"I —" Changkyun started. That would probably be best. The recommended amount of time.

He tried to tell himself that, at least. That he should be reasonable about this. He licked his lips and glanced behind him, down the hallway.

A month was a long time.

"Do you have any appointments about this time next week?"

He was sure he imagined the knowing smile.

—

"Pfft, what experts?"

Changkyun had made the (incorrect) decision to tell his roommate Hyungwon about his plans for the next week. He'd lied, of course, and told him that the recommended schedule was weekly so he didn't seem like a weird, despondent man itching for his next fix.

_He wasn't_ he told himself vehemently.

"I don't know," Changkyun said, trying to act casual. He climbed up on the end of Hyungwon's bed. He'd always liked his room. There was something very unpretentious about it, the way the walls were bare only in the gaps between anime and girl group posters. The way one half-dead plant sat on the window sill. He knew the closet was filled with expensive clothing, mostly gifts from his part time modelling gig, but Changkyun could still look around the room and pretend that they were on similar footing. "I didn't think to ask."

"It's probably one of those things where they tell you an expert said it, but they've completely made it up," Hyungwon said with a shrug of his thin shoulders. "Or it's from a study in the '50s or something, like when there were only a dozen or so permanent alien residents on the planet."

Changkyun made a face. He wasn't really in the mood to hear pessimism. He felt so _good_ like all his muscles had been wrung carefully out and then cradled back together, like all of the little aches that turned up between his shoulder blades and at the back of his neck had melted away, like he'd laid beneath a weighted blanket for the better part of an hour, just letting it compress him until he felt like a person again.

"Whatever," he said, waving his hand at his roommate. "I don't make fun of you when you go to Squish Labs."

Hyungwon rolled his eyes. "That's a sensory experience, scientifically designed to engage all the parts of your brain. Your thing might have been a wholesome experience for you or whatever, but most days it's probably just alien sex." He must have sense Changkyun's disapproving energy, because he frowned a little, lips pouting out in that way they did when he didn't like admitting he'd been overly harsh. "But like, that's maybe because I don't know that much about it, you know? Keep going if you like it."

"I'm going to," Changkyun said, yanking a pillow out from beside Hyungwon and pulling it into his lap. Without thinking too much about it, he pulled his knees up a little and wrapped his arms around them, effectively wrapping himself around the pillow completely.

"Good," Hyungwon said, making a little face. "It'll be good for you, you seem —" He cut himself off and licked uncomfortably at his lips. Changkyun frowned. He seemed what? "You seem good, really. Maybe it'll be good for you."

Changkyun wasn't sure what that meant either, but it — it felt right, too. "Thanks," he said quietly.

There was a little pause where they just sort of looked at one another. Sharing the space. It was nice, in a way. It wasn't often they allowed the room to be appreciative of each other.

And then Hyungwon hauled off and hit him with a pillow.

**Author's Note:**

> I appreciate all feedback :)
> 
> Follow for crying and nonsense  
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